The Nation
Thursday, Dec 17, 1998
Any high-profile corporation deciding to invest in Burma under its current military regime is bound to become the subject of controversy. But the same is also true for non-government organisations seeking to work in the strife-torn country.
A new report on Burma's forests compiled by the US-based World Resources reveals just how difficult it is for outsiders to help Burma conserve its natural bounty. The issue is crucial because Burma now contains half of the remaining forests in mainland Southeast Asia, but perhaps not for long. Burma's forests are increasingly falling prey to loggers exporting timber, usually illegally, to neighbouring countries such as China, Thailand and India, which have already cut down most of their own forests due to unsustainable logging practices. Unless action is taken soon, Burma will follow in their footsteps, and suffer all the related environmental problems of massive flooding, soil erosion and dry-season water shortages that have become so common in the region.
Thailand helped kick off this trend when, following the takeover of Burma by the ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council (Slorc) in 1988, then-Army chief Gen Chavalit Yongchaiyudh flew to Rangoon and helped secure 42 logging concessions for Thai companies in exchange for hard currency that helped the cash-strapped regime stay afloat.
Apparently fed up with the Thais' clear-cutting tactics, Burma has since revoked the concessions, but illegal logging by both Thai and Chinese firms continues inside Burma, with authorities either turning a blind eye or extending a greased palm. Meanwhile, an illegal timber trade is now also said to be flourishing along the Indian-Burmese border.
This dire situation is highlighted in the report ''Logging Burma's Frontier Forests: Resources and the Regime'', which provides a welcome addition to our scant knowledge of the forestry situation in a country isolated by its dictatorial rulers. A useful summary, complete with interactive maps, can be found on the Internet at http://www.wri.org/ffi/burma/.
Slorc, now known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), is not solely to blame for logging in border areas, where most of Burma's remaining forests can be found. Some of the country's ethnic minority groups have also overseen extensive logging operations to support their insurrections against the central government. But the report makes clear that most of the blame falls on the country's military rulers.
''The rate of deforestation in Burma has more than doubled since the Slorc came to power in 1988,'' it states. ''Timber exports have helped pay for the regime's arms purchases and a doubling in the size of the army.''
Logging also seems to be at its most rapacious in the areas controlled by the military. The declared value of Burma's timber exports amounted to roughly US$190 million in 1995, making it the country's largest foreign exchange earner. Teak sales alone totalled more than $150 million, close to 10 per cent of Burma's GDP. And these are just the official figures.
Making the situation even more precarious is that Burma's system of protected areas is so weak. Only five per cent of the country's area falls under protected status, and enforcement is often lacking. For instance, Burma's first wildlife sanctuary, the 200,000-hectare Pindaung reserve set up in 1918, has been so degraded by poaching, encroachment and government counter-insurgency measures that, according to the report, it ''has effectively ceased to exist''.
Officials at Burma's Ministry of Forestry are generally considered to be well-meaning and capable, and the Forest Policy it came up with three years ago is considered promising (if lacking in terms of social forestry), but it has been rendered largely ineffective due to the ministry's lack of political power, especially compared to the Myanmar Timber Enterprise (MTE), a state agency which has a monopoly over teak sales and funnels revenue to the SPDC.
Indeed, although it is not mentioned in the report, in 1995 Slorc effectively broke a ceasefire agreement and went to war with the Karenni National Progressive Party, a resistance group which was undermining the MTE's teak monopoly by smuggling logs into Thailand's Mae Hong Son province.
Even where logging is kept at bay, a thriving illegal wildlife trade has ''hollowed out'' Burma's few conservation areas. ''Hunting with the aim of selling wildlife parts to China is particularly severe,'' according to the report. ''For example, the rhinoceros population of Tamanthi, Burma's largest national park, has been almost completely wiped out [and] all indications point to the tiger population being very thin throughout much of its native habitat.''
Under these conditions, official plans to increase the number of protected areas to cover 10 per cent of the country, although admirable, will have a limited impact, and in some cases the motives behind declaring conservation zones seem murky at best. Total and Unocal, two oil companies which have built a pipeline to transport gas from Burma's Gulf of Martaban into Thailand, have proposed the creation of the huge Myanmoletkat Nature Reserve in southern Burma which would cover the area the pipeline runs through. It would also overlap with the Kaserdoh Wildlife Sanctuary established by the Karen National Union, another resistance group still actively fighting the SPDC.
In the words of the WRI report, the gazetting of the reserve ''has raised concerns about the extent to which the regime's renewed interest in environmental protection is being driven by its desire to relocate populations that might pose a security risk to key infrastructure projects''.
The issues surrounding Myanmoletkat highlight the political difficulties outsiders face in their efforts to promote conservation in Burma. Among all the international environmental groups, only the US-based Wildlife Conservation Society has decided to bite the proverbial bullet and work with the government by helping to train officials in protected area management, despite the criticisms of pro-democracy activists, who claim it is helping to prop up the military regime. Most green groups seem to agree that constructive engagement -- or in this case, protective engagement -- with the military regime is not a wise policy, and have opted to stay out.
By all accounts, the authors of the WRI report had a difficult time coming to a decision on this issue, but in the end they essentially concluded that attempting to work with the current Burmese regime simply isn't worthwhile.
''Under different political circumstances, our overriding recommendation to the international community would be that it should support the Ministry of Forestry to implement its own Forest Policy. In practice, however, this recommendation is meaningless because none of the preconditions for more rational forest management exists in Burma,'' the report concludes.
The authors content themselves with advising the international community to ''support projects that shed light on what is happening on the ground'', include forestry and environmental issues in any international dialogue with Burma, and use existing treaties to exchange information about forestry management with Burma.
In practice, this means that the only hope for Burma's forests rests with a more responsible attitude from the country's neighbours, and that is a faint hope indeed. In the end, like so much else in Burma, meaningful action to protect the forests must await some kind of political settlement.
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